CEHD welcomes eight new faculty members

CEHD is proud to announce that eight new faculty members will be joining the college this fall. They include:

Dunja Antunovic
Dunja Antunovic will be an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology. Her research focuses on the intersection of gender, sport, and media. She explores the media representation of women’s sport, gender equity in the sport industry, and fandom of women’s sport. She received her BA and MA in journalism from DePaul University in Chicago and her PhD in mass communications from The Pennsylvania State University. Throughout her academic career, she focused on women’s and gender studies. Prior to her academic career, Antunovic played tennis internationally and coached on the Division I level.

Chalandra Bryant
Chalandra Bryant will be a professor in the Department of Family Social Science. She has a BS in biology and an MA in science education from the University of South Florida and a PhD in child development and family relations from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the developmental roots and course of close relationships; the ability to sustain close intimate ties; and the manner in which social, familial, economic, and psychosocial factors are linked to marital outcomes. She was named the 2019-20 Ambiguous Loss Scholar in the Department of Family Social Science.

Damien Fair
Damien Fair will be a professor in the Institute of Child Development at CEHD and in the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical School. He has a BS in biology from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; a master of medical science degree from the Yale University School of Medicine; and a PhD in neuroscience from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. His interests focus on the mechanisms and principles that underlie the developing brain. He will be the Redleaf Endowed Director of the University’s new Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain (MIDB), a collaboration between CEHD and the Medical School.

Rachel Hawe
Rachel Hawe will be an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology. Her research is in stroke recovery and rehabilitation, hemiparetic cerebral palsy, bilateral coordination, neuroplasticity, robotic assessments, neuroimaging, motor development, eye tracking, and visuospatial attention. She has a BS in biomedical engineering from the University of Rochester, a doctorate of physical therapy from Northwestern University, and a PhD in biomedical engineering from Northwestern. She also was a post-doctoral fellow in clinical neurosciences at the University of Calgary.

Stacey Horn
Stacey Horn will be a professor and department head in the Department of Family Social Science. Her research focuses on sexual orientation and gender identity prejudices and bias-motivated bullying among adolescents. This research is in the service of creating safer and more welcoming schools for all young people. She has a BA in child development and English from the University of Minnesota, an MA in the teaching of English from the University of St. Thomas, and a PhD in human development from the University of Maryland. Prior to academic, she taught high school English for several years. 

Di (Landy) Lu
Di (Landy) Lu will be an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology. She has a BA in English from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China; an MA in sport sociology from Peking University in Beijing; and a PhD in sport management from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also was a post-doctoral research associate at Western University in London, Canada. Her research lies at the intersection of sport, society, and change. Her interests are in management and organizational studies in sport, organizational theory, organizational and institutional change, inter-organizational relationships, and social network analysis.

Ceema Samimi
Ceema Samimi will be an assistant professor in the School of Social Work. Their interests include social welfare policy, community and multicultural practice, advocacy, research methods, restorative practices, community organizing, human rights and social work, and decolonizing social work. They are interested in employing critical and community-based methodologies to examine how youth are impacted by exclusion from systems that are designed to serve them. They have a BA in political science from the University of Colorado, a MSSW from Columbia University, an MPA from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a PhD from the University of Denver.

Armeda Stevenson Wojciak
Armeda Stevenson Wojciak will be an associate professor in the Department of Family Social Science. She holds a BA in psychology and an MS in marriage and family therapy from the University of Nevada Las Vegas and a PhD in marriage and family therapy from The Florida State University. Her research is in improving outcomes for children and families with adverse childhood experiences. Her interests are in resilience, trauma-informed practices, foster care, aging out, parenting curriculum, home visiting services, parent-child relationships, and sibling relationships.